Page 29 of One Wild Chance

She’s wearing a white sundress that shows off long, tan legs and makes me forget all about my chores. My mind races back to yesterday—how it felt to have her next to me on the saddle, riding back to the barn with her practically in my lap.

I should probably just put the incident out of my mind. But how can I when she’s standing there looking like that?

When she sees me approaching, her soft, pink lips curve, and I swear she’s wearing lip gloss.

I hate that I’m noticing. And I don’t like that I can’t stop staring at her.

“Where are you going this early?” I ask.

“Farmers market.” She sets the buckets in the truck bed and turns back for another load.

“We have one of those now?” I reach past her and take the next one before she can lift it. “Pretty soon we’re going to have decent cell service and a McDonald’s.”

“Ha, doubt it.” She tosses her hair over her shoulder and gives me a look. “This is the social event of the week in Golden Springs. You should come.”

I shake my head. “Not my thing.”

“Why not?”

“Don’t like crowds.”

“You played hockey in front of thousands of people.”

“That’s different. It was a game.” I pick up more flowers. “I hate lots of people wanting to be all up in my business.”

She stops working to look at me. “They only ask because they care.”

“They ask because they’re nosy,” I correct. “When I left this place, I was the first to go pro from this town. Now there’s four of us, and nobody remembers who went first.”

It was big news back then, everyone congratulating me when I got drafted right at the end of my senior year. It’s rare to go straight from high school to the NHL, and I thought I’d play forever. But then I had my first knee injury, which took me out for two months. When my contract expired that summer, nobody called. I ended up signing an AHL deal instead and never went back.

“You put this place on the map,” she says, lifting more flowers into her teal-blue truck. “The town’s so proud of you, Jaxon.”

Maybe they are, but when I can’t even walk into a gas station without being mistaken for my younger brother, it doesn’t feel like it. It’s always about Rhett—the one who got all the good luck while I got injury after injury.

“It’s not just the career stuff,” I say. “People loved my parents. They’re going to tell me how sorry they are for my loss.” I take some flowers from her and set them next to the others in the bed. Losing two parents in just over a year is terrible enough without people reminding you of it every day.

“I’ve never lost a parent,” she says. “But whenever mine come up in conversation, it gets”—she adjusts a flower in a bucket—“awkward.”

I know her dad left when she was young, and her mom raised her by herself. Other than that, I don’t know much about her family.

“You know,” she says, changing the subject, “as the future owner of Lucky Chance, you could remind people this farm is still running. Clients, boarders, buyers—they’ll all be there.”

“How would that help?”

“Word of mouth is still the best marketing tool there is in this town. Maybe if you keep people focused on the farm, they won’t ask questions you don’t want to answer.”

I lean against the truck. A farmers market full of locals might tell me who the competition is and what people in this county actually think about our farm.

“You know, you might be right,” I say.

She stares at me. “Wait. Did you just say I’m right?”

“Enjoy that fact.” I smirk. “And I’ll take you up on that offer to join you. Just give me a second to get something.”

She checks her watch. “You’ve got two minutes until this train leaves.”

I head into the barn to grab my jacket just as Rhett shouts, “Look out!”